Elizabeth Gilmore Holt

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Elizabeth Gilmore Holt (July 5, 1905 – January 26, 1987) was an American art historian.

Early life and education

Elizabeth Basye Gilmore was born in San Francisco, California in 1905, and raised in Madison, Wisconsin; her father Eugene Allen Gilmore was a diplomat and university president.[1] She grew up living at the Eugene A. Gilmore House, which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1908.[2]

Elizabeth Gilmore was one of the first graduates from the International School Manila, while her father was serving as American vice-governor of the Philippine Islands.[3] She attended the University of Wisconsin as an undergraduate (class of 1929), earned a masters degree at Radcliffe College in 1932, and her doctoral degree, with an art history thesis written in German, at the University of Munich in 1934.[4]

Career

Holt began her teaching career at Duke University.[5] While in North Carolina, she opened a community arts center in Raleigh, under the auspices of the Works Projects Administration.[6] After World War II, she went to Berlin to establish the Office of Women's Affairs for the US Office of Military Government, and was given a small replica of the Freedom Bell for her efforts on behalf of the city's women.[7]

Holt's main work was a documentary history of art, edited compilations of selected and translated works in the development of art.[8] In 1947 her Literary Sources of Art History was published by Princeton University Press, and became the basis of the multi-volume series edited by Holt, titled A Documentary History of Art, first published in the 1950s and 1960s. They have since been reprinted in various editions, including paperbacks for student use.[9] In 1955, Holt was appointed an associate of the American Association of University Women, focusing on the status of women.[10]

In 1979, Elizabeth Gilmore Holt was named a Guggenheim Fellow;[11] she also received a Women's Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award, in 1982.[12]

Personal life and legacy

Elizabeth Gilmore married career diplomat John Bradshaw Holt in 1936; they had three children together. Elizabeth Gilmore Holt died in early 1987, age 81, in Washington, D.C.[13] Her papers are in the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.[14][15]

Her documentary histories of art remain widely-used standards today in the field. There is an Elizabeth Gilmore Holt Prize for Best Graduate Paper in Art History, awarded annually at Syracuse University.[16] At the University of Iowa, there is an Elizabeth Gilmore Holt Scholarship given primarily to married women doctoral students in art and art history.[17]

Notable works

  • Elizabeth Gilmore Holt, The Expanding World of Art, 1874-1902 (Yale University Press 1988).[18]
  • Elizabeth Gilmore Holt, The Art of All Nations, 1850-1873: The Emerging Role of Exhibitions and Critics (Princeton University Press 1981).[19]
  • Elizabeth Gilmore Holt, ed. The Triumph of Art for the Public, 1785-1848 (Princeton University Press 1983).[20]
  • Elizabeth Gilmore Holt, ed. From the Classicists to the Impressionists: Art and Architecture in the Nineteenth Century (Yale University Press 1986).[21]
  • Elizabeth Gilmore Holt, ed. A Documentary History of Art, Volume 2: Michelangelo and the Mannerists, the Baroque and the Eighteenth Century (Princeton University Press 1982).[22]
  • Elizabeth Gilmore Holt, ed., A Documentary History of Art, Volume 1: The Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Doubleday 1957).[23]

References

  1. ↑ Blanche Basye Gilmore Papers, Iowa Women's Archive, The University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, IA.
  2. ↑ Narciso G. Menocal, ed., Taliesin, 1911-1914 (Southern Illinois University Press 1992): 83. ISBN 0809316250
  3. ↑ International School of Manila: History.
  4. ↑ "Holt, Elizabeth [Basye] Gilmore," Dictionary of Art Historians.
  5. ↑ Robert Franklin Durden, The Launching of Duke University, 1924-1949 (Duke University Press 1993): 267. ISBN 0822313022
  6. ↑ Ola Maie Foushee, "North Carolina's Community Art Centers," in John Franklin White, ed., Art in Action: American Art Centers and the New Deal (Scarecrow Press 1987): 159. ISBN 0810820072
  7. ↑ Dorothy McCardle, "Many a Dulles Had a Hand in Berlin Hall," Washington Post and Times Herald (September 22, 1957): F7.
  8. ↑ Gabriel P. Weisberg and Laurinda S. Dixon, "The Legacy of Elizabeth Gilmore Holt," in Gabriel P. Weisberg and Laurinda S. Dixon, eds., The Documentary Image: Visions in Art History (Syracuse University Press 1987): xvii. ISBN 0815624107
  9. ↑ Alicia Faxon, "Elizabeth Gilmore Holt: Art Historian and Maverick," Women's Art Journal 2(1)(Spring-Summer 1981): 45-48.
  10. ↑ "Elizabeth Gilmore Holt Given AAUW Post," Iowa City Press-Citizen (April 20, 1955): 6. via Newspapers.com open access publication - free to read
  11. ↑ John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Fellows Finder.
  12. ↑ Thalia Gourma-Peterson, ed. "Women's Caucus for Art Honor Awards," catalog for a 1982 exhibition in San Francisco CA.
  13. ↑ "Elizabeth G. Holt, 81, Peripatetic Art Expert," New York Times (January 28, 1987).
  14. ↑ "Elizabeth Basye Gilmore Holt Papers, 1931-1987," Smithsonian Archives of American Art.
  15. ↑ "John Bradshaw Holt, Former Diplomat, 84," New York Times (September 14, 1994): A17.
  16. ↑ "Award Winners Named," Syracuse University Department of Art and Music Histories Newsletter (2014).
  17. ↑ University of Iowa, School of Art and Art History, Art History Division Scholarships for Graduate Students.
  18. ↑ Elizabeth Gilmore Holt, The Expanding World of Art, 1874-1902 (Yale University Press 1988). ISBN 9780300038255
  19. ↑ Elizabeth Gilmore Holt, The Art of All Nations, 1850-1873: The Emerging Role of Exhibitions and Critics (Princeton University Press 1982). ISBN 9780691039961
  20. ↑ Elizabeth Gilmore Holt, ed. The Triumph of Art for the Public, 1785-1848 (Princeton University Press 1983).
  21. ↑ Elizabeth Gilmore Holt, ed. From the Classicists to the Impressionists: Art and Architecture in the Nineteenth Century (Yale University Press 1986).
  22. ↑ Elizabeth Gilmore Holt, ed. A Documentary History of Art, Volume 2: Michelangelo and the Mannerists, the Baroque and the Eighteenth Century (Princeton University Press 1982).
  23. ↑ Elizabeth Gilmore Holt, ed., A Documentary History of Art, Volume 1: The Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Doubleday 1957).
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